


All I Have are Words, Words Are All I have

by Ultracrepidarian



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, Original Fiction, Original work - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-19
Updated: 2019-09-19
Packaged: 2020-10-21 18:48:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20698307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ultracrepidarian/pseuds/Ultracrepidarian
Summary: [ ] is a Cognitian, a computer scientist/engineer that works on modelling the human consciousness and replicates that onto computer hardware/software.Five years past, she, her girlfriend, and a team of others made the Þȝmia (Thymia) project. Cue a breakthrough three years later, managing cognitive processes that were similar to how human perception and personality were embodied in us people.This comes along with the notable hitch that since programs aren't people, they aren't built the same way was us, and so fundamentally experience time, causation, and all those other things differently, but they do still experience it, and in a way similar enough to being human, at least when viewed on the outside. As this breakthrough occurs, she's chosen as the de facto press figurehead, having a huge spotlight shone on her. This continues for about six months until she breaks down and takes an extended leave of absence. Originally meant for one month, it has since slipped into much more than that.Enter things as they are now, as her mental health recovers and she deals with the implications of the technology she's wrought upon others.





	All I Have are Words, Words Are All I have

It’s three in the morning, and I can’t shake off the feeling that I’m forgetting something.

There’s an implacable malaise that swarms the air like miasma, a pseudoscientific explanation for my pseudorealistic expectations of how I should be able to think.

I forced myself out of my mattress and headed to the bathroom for my pills. I grabbed one of many white cubes, hoping that it would at least jog my memory somewhat, or at least extract this emotion, reaching into me and pulling it out like mucus clogging my nose so that I can breathe easily again.

It’s been eight years since I’ve decided to record my memories, five since I’ve started doing it regularly and with relatively the same fidelity I do now. For reasons I can’t remember, I can’t seem to distinguish fact from fiction anymore, I can’t seem to see if the people I’ve been meeting ever really existed, or if I’ve just added them there to make myself feel better.

Either way, if I never see them again, at least I know that they’re serving their purpose.

I turn to the window, its pane pitch black, sealed shut by the night.

I could go outside and see the stars. Stare at their miniscule size, lose myself in the vastness of space, and hopefully forget these emotions, but I think I’d like to at least attempt to remember for today. I’ll just wait for the sunrise. It’ll be a mess, but progress is progress.

I opened my laptop and scanned through each of the connectomes I’ve got. Most were made by friends who wanted to preserve themselves before undergoing some drastic life-changing decision, a few were last-ditch attempts to save someone as they lay dying, hoping that maybe they’ll be able to be recreated, if not saved. It’s a hope I’m still working on, an effort that’s thankfully given me money and books, under the unfortunate assumption that people think that I’m interested in the greater good to be a part of something this daunting.

On the contrary, I think that you’d have to be one of the most selfish people in the world to even have the drive to stay in this field. You can still be nice, of course, but if you’ve got a bleeding heart for those who can’t be saved by your particular science, you eventually see how limited your scope is and wonder if all you’re looking at are markets for lost causes every time you look at a crowd, someone too old or too poor or too stubborn to walk into that light of the singularity where we singularly singe off all anatomy. Pure, abstract connection. Total immortality, at least for a time. Boxed into these lotus-feeding machines to hopefully be content with what they have, transcendent bodies of technology and versatility. Something people would write myths of just decades ago.

I run my hands through my thighs to swat away bugs that aren’t there.

I wonder if I’m awake right now, I hope I am. There’s a definite benefit to being awake, your actions have a very real impact that don’t hit other people in the same way your dreams do, at least, if you believe what they say. I lost track of where I was from being awake to asleep ages ago. One moment you blink and everything goes according to plan, then you blink again and realize that either you’ve went back six hours in time or that you’ve just been dreaming of having a pretty decent start to the day.

I wish I could decide which I preferred.

I can barely believe my own words anymore.

Regardless, I’ve set up a near-constant stream where my dreams and memories are both recorded 24/7, so I can just retrace my steps if I’ve missed any breakthroughs. Now that I think about it, it’s likely just blurred the gap even more and caused more problems, but at least I can forget that for now and rediscover that thought later.

Lately, I’ve been having flashes of melancholic nostalgia, where I keep dwelling on friends that’ve gone or left or changed irreparably and where I couldn’t have recorded the yet. I wish I could stop, it’s bringing tears to my eyes.

I can’t focus when I can’t see.

I want to curl up back to my bed, but I know I’ll just stare at the ceiling for hours again. I’ve always felt like I’ve had a 28-hour internal clock instead of everyone else’s, so I’ll just worry about normal people sadnesses when I slip back into normal people time. When I sleep by regular hours, I mean.

I’m losing my words.

My words are all I have.

I take a different pill, one for lost productivity, one that doesn’t cause but signals a loss for me anyway. My doctor said that it’s normal, I’ve told them it still doesn’t make me feel normal.

At least they say it’s alright.

Its cool artificial casing gleams like the moon that I know is outside but won’t let in, thanks. It’s a smooth, purple feature that reminds me of why I dove into this field in the first place. To be part of these tiny little miracles, to help people who want them. I smooth it with my fingers, relishing its pure geometry, a tapered cylinder, beautiful, perfect, precise. I hesitate swallowing it, but at least I’ll be better off for now.

I want some chocolate.

It's too sweet for me, I'm dizzy again. Great, maybe I can sleep after a bit now.

I woke up to 鬰 right next to me, soundly asleep and sprawled across the bed, shifting slightly, turning here and there, and then laying still, her back to me. I stared at it, noting how the sun glinted off her skin, a smooth, simple sheen curled over it that was almost artificial in appearance and completely artificial in nature. These days, with almost everything you can think of being so easily directly manipulated by artificial means, there's this implicit assumption that everything is, and that being natural, leaving something as it is, is what stands out. It'll pass again in about a decade or so. I was wondering how I could've woken up so early and yet so rested, given last night's unproductive episode, as I realized that time wasn't going backwards, and that the sun was in fact setting.

also, that I've been staring at my girlfriend's back for almost half an hour. In a lazy fog, I slowly decided to trail my finger on her skin, writing down whatever came to my mind until she woke up and told me what to do. I toyed with ideas that fascinated me, never really dwelling on a single one for too long as I kept myself hung up on refrains of concepts that eventually merged with one another from the sheer weight I was putting under my head. Layers. Hidden layers, layers that can manipulate what's observable. Qualia. Smooth skin. Straight people. Going outside. Booting up my people suit so that I can go outside without having to go outside, or rather, control a positronic puppet that tells me what outside is like so that I don't have to see it for myself. Social interaction. Parsing all that. Her back moved. She's waking up. Wait no, she's must be really tired. Oh wait, she's got my face in her hands now, how did she move so fast. Ah.

She kissed me.

I thanked her for that, my tongue stumbling on itself when I tried to make anything more complicated.

She giggled.

God, I love her.

She rose up from the bed, told me she needed to take a piss, verbatim, as she walked into the bathroom.

I realized I needed to do the same and followed suit. She used the toilet, so I just squatted down above the bathroom drain. She doesn't think it's that weird anymore. Saves more water than flushing, anyway. She started to speak.

"Stayed up all night?"

"Yes, I was waxing poetic about why I was wasting my time and waning poetic on getting anything done."

"Alright, I kinda understand what that meant."

"Thanks."

"You don't need to-

well, alright. You're welcome. Today's one of those days?"

"I feel like I know nothing and that I am constantly slipping despite being on some rather stable ground."

"Took your meds?"

"Ah. Before I slept?"

"Well, nothing to be done now then, I suppose. Took out a day from work because I felt a bit taxed, too. They actually let me go, which was nice."

"Great. Is it okay if I stay with you for a while? Like, just be your shadow for today and never leave?"

"Are you sure? You tend to regret doing that and say that feel like you’ve wasted the entire day after."

"I've resigned the thought. You're familiar. You're understanding. I like you. Also, you smell really nice today."

"I just woke up. Didn't even shower or do anything yet."

"Yes."

"Well, I-” “…you pervert." She said, giggling again with a slight grin, on the side of her that I could see.

I finished doing my business and changed into set of cleaner clothes, and promptly crawled back to her side, debating if I should offer my clothes to her or not.

“Hey, aren’t you still working on that one connectome scan for a client?” She asked, sliding on a loose shirt and a pair of sweatpants. “Oh yeah, thanks for reminding me. Well, I’ve already processed each major section of the brain, so the bulk of the work’s done. I could send it now, most people are usually satisfied with that. It’s not like they ever choose to clone themselves using a copy they feel is a bit too old, or that much of them would even want a copy in the first place. I’d tell them the statistics of them having someone else who exists who’s pretty much like them, but that’s already lost me too many clients.” We’re walking to the kitchen. Breakfast for dinner. “Wait, how many other for-hire Cognitians are there?” I help her gather up the ingredients. “I dunno. Maybe people just don’t want to preserve themselves digitally forever after dwelling on it for a bit. Do people normally feel scared when they think they’re being replaced?” She handles the knives, I handle the drinks. “We both know I can’t give an answer you’d like for that, I am a fake, after all.” Grapes and kiwi sound delicious. Blended. “Don’t say that, you’re human just like anyone else. You think and breathe and act like most people do, and where you come from doesn’t matter.” Accidentally squeezed a kiwi in my hand too hard and it went everywhere. “I know I do, just let me use the word for now.”

Dinner is served. Bacon and eggs with a side of vegetables.

I can trust that they’ll still be Bacon and eggs with a side of vegetables. when I’ve long since cleared them from my mind. That’s a comforting thought.

“Going outside would do you some good, you know. Just for a bit more. Treadmills are great and all, but staying inside all the time worries me. I want you to take care of yourself.” She said, with more affect than she says most things. She means it. “Look, if it helps, we could probably just walk to someplace quiet and sit and stare at things for an hour. You’d like that, right?” She says, looking out for me. “Wanna go to the penthouse and stare at the scenery first before we actually leave the building?” I say. Maybe I should leave more than once a week. The outside world is beautiful, to be sure. I hope. Maybe it’s changed for the better since I went out last week. Maybe the ice cream aisle would actually stock Mint Chocolate Chip.

I took out a set of clothes that belonged to her, since I didn’t want to be seen in mine. I had to hold her hand most of the time when we were with other people, which would be nice if it weren’t so awkward. If they can see, they can judge, and they will, even if they don’t know it. I’ve seen it. Enough thinking about work, please. She spotted a cat.

An adorable cat, young and stray with white, black, and orange all trying to claim it as its own.

And now, me.

But I can’t handle another life, it’d be better off with someone more responsible, on its own.

I ran to a vending machine and bought a can of tuna to give to it.

“How are you so kind to animals you barely know but seem so aloof to colleagues who’ve worked with you for years?”

“I try not to, I don’t think I am, but they always say that I do. I’ve stopped trying and just decided to make up for it by doing more work than them.”

“You know, I think that might be making it worse. They’ll probably think you’re trying to outperform them.”

“But I am outperforming them, they appreciate the sentiment. They say that it must be hard for me to think at a human level when the only warmth I get most of the time is from overheating components. I believe that’s true.”

She hesitated for a bit. Oh no.

“I don’t mean to knock your work schedule, I’m content with hol-“

“No, they do have a point though. I’ve only been able to see you twice within the past two weeks. How do you not miss me?” She says, turning to look at me.

“I think of you and the things we’ve already done and just hope that they’ll make do for now as I wait for us to make more.”

“You know, sometimes I wonder which one of us is objectively less human.”

I understood that joke and laughed.

“You’re less human, I’m less of a person.”

“Hmm, fair enough. Look up, the sky’s as breathtaking as always, isn’t it?”

“It’s at that hour where things are just about to turn from day to night. From afternoon to almost evening. The clouds mix and split in this slow, chaotic split that gives us this dim, mellow hue that’s kind of like it’s straight out of an anime movie, isn’t it?”

“Heh, yeah, it is. Reminds me of how we first met online. 君の名は still hits as hard as ever, but it’s funny how it’s changed a lot in my head since we’ve became a thing. Anyway, look down. where should we go, hmm?”

The top floor of this faceless building gives a view of almost the entire city. I moved here with her after I graduated my second year of college and convinced my parents that I could be independent, while paradoxically having them pay for my rent. I make enough to pay it myself now, a turn of events more shocking than most I could find in the stories I see.

I probably couldn’t last more than a half-hour up here, but for now it feels like those thirty minutes contain all the time in the world, with her.

The top floor of this faceless building gave us a view of the city’s features. Buildings and houses for miscellaneous purposes with varying floors spread out through most of the east, and the fancier shopping districts, restaurants and universities to the west, stretching as much as it can as it touches the shoreline, where a singular, gigantic bridge stretches out for kilometers out until it stops to reach a house on the sea.

The entire city is peppered with skyscrapers and paused by flat plains of park, parking, or pockets of postmodern purpose. Buildings that are high enough to meet the required height standard of 500 meters tend to have tunnels built into their design that work as routes to one another, forming a network of tubes with curves and twists in the sky that can shift parts or all of itself from transparent to opaque to whatever the environment needed at the time. A miracle of science I was fortunate enough to have a colleague involved in. I still don’t understand any of it, something about metamaterials drawing in sunlight almost completely and using that to generate part of the energy needed to power these things when they ran. Eh, they’re still massive power hogs, but at least they’re slightly more efficient power hogs.

Right now, they take a muted, almost completely greyed out shade of pale green, just striking enough to catch someone’s attention when they’re looking for it, but not enough to have it completely stand out from the broad swathes of city color. In a city that’s rapidly running out of space, there’s no direction to go but up.

I thought, let’s go to the park and see where our stomach takes us after that.

“Let’s go to the park and eat when we’re done.”

“Sounds good!”

We left. The cat didn’t bite me when I patted its head. I’m happy.

The elevator’s fine today. It didn’t squeak or stutter or do anything else to convince me that we’d be trapped in it. I spent the ride fussing about how my head was laying on her shoulder. Sometimes I wish she’d be taller. By a bit at least, by a lot at most.

We walked for about ten minutes and used the Brights to commute the rest of the way. A couple of kilometers away from our place, I step away into an urban field of concrete and trees. I look up and see a ring of metal glance back at me, the tubes forming a screen that would be invisible if it weren’t for the dim, sans-serif letters that flashed periodically reminding you where you were. 百合 Greater district, contained by the 白河on the north and the beginning of the university districts on the south. All other roads lead to irrelevance.

I let the architectural beauty of the place take hold of me, circling around and observing the buildings, their curves and muscle, the way they contrast one another from boutique to mall to library to park. She let out a small giggle. “You’re acting like a kid, with how you’re looking at everything so amazed and wide-eyed.” I kissed her on the forehead, hoping that would reciprocate. It did.

“So, which park do you want to go to? I’m feeling a bit hungry right n-’

‘-Well then, we can just skip that and go eat. Anything you wanna do.’’’

“Nah, it’s fine. I want you to decide. You need to be more sure of yourself when you’re anxious like this, can you choose?”

‘I-

Well,

can you give me a minute?”

“Take all the time you need, it’s okay.”

“Thanks.”

I ran through the list of places here that we could go to. I shortlisted it to a completely automated restaurant with no people or a traditional Filipino eatery that manages to cook chicken in thirty different ways, in the end scrapping all of that for a last-second choice of an adorable, way-too-personal restaurant that customizes their service and staff to your liking. I should try to talk more when I’m like this. Doing it to people I have to talk to anyway would be good.

“Let’s go to 总称餐厅[1]. I wanna see if I can order food on my own today.”

“Aw, great! Is it Chinese?”

“I can’t tell. If it is, they probably botched the name on purpose. It sounds like complete gibberish.”

“Ah. Well, I can’t understand it anyway, so it doesn’t really concern me. If I can’t read the menus there, order for me, alright?”

-I forgot to consider that.

“Yeah, alright! I wanna shake off this anxiety wrapping around me today. Let’s see if I can make you proud.”

We walked across geometric forests of metal and glass, taking care to protect her from all the people here. As the day quickly dims, some of the lights start to open, billboards, holograms, buskers looking for a quick buck. The city’s people Up High turn on the clouds for the night, wisps of vapor, like smoke, slowly billowing and scattering together. Clouds within a certain area glow cold, muted pastel, others have the slogans of companies and other messages fading in and out, the sky being the limit.

Eventually, the flood of zero-to-one range flashes will overtake all other lights, outshining even the moon at times. Looking to the heavens for stars all our lives, we’ve tried to bring them down to earth, and lost most of them. We’ve only got left the ones that looked pretty to begin with. The restaurant was decorated today in colors of Teal and Pink, advertisements of virtual divas taking up most of the entrance wall’s real estate, showing song previews and concert dates. It brought a smile to my face to see one of our works there, a song made in our bedroom, and she shook my shoulders widely as she pointed in disbelief, her name next to those idols way too independent and slipstream to be actual “idols”.

As we stepped through the door, I was hit with a wave of nostalgia, hit with a distinct scent I’m absolutely sure has tinged places of my childhood with frequent gusto, though becoming more and more rare as time goes on.

The thought of it scares me.

Its reception area is doused in colors of cold light, calming me down as I note the way the lights stretch and emphasize the features of the receptionist, an outgoing, cute firework of a girl, her outfit of jeans and a turtleneck sweater covering up most of a people suit’s hinge points, the only indication that’s she’s an artificial intelligence being how she was almost too happy to see us, and her answer when I asked her. My body went on autopilot as it decided what to have for the both of us as I focused on the shadows the light made, playing with contours of our bodies.

Private room for 2? No, a simple room viewing the common area would do.

Choice of aesthetic? Um, anime and music that I’ve never heard of, or ones that otherwise bring in that drowning, amnesiac nostalgia.

Choice of cuisine? Something that’ll remind me that I want to talk to my girlfriend while we eat. Also, pizza with all the usual on it, with grapes.

Would you like a companion on call while you eat? Yes please, someone artificial. Their stories are much more relatable.

I spat on a swab to confirm my identity, filled out a quick survey and led her to the room, firmly trying to take the initiative. I felt 鬰’s smile as I walked towards the door, rounding a couple of corners and opening a set of double doors to be greeted with a room bathed in beige light, lined with neon accents surrounded with memorabilia and work that I’ve preset to my profile. Books, projects, games, from days, months, years ago that I’d say that I’ll come back to. And I will. Eventually. The wall opposite the window is almost entirely just a single glass pane, overlooking a common area where the music vibrates in sync with the lights, a display on the window currently putting the show on mute.

Our server came to the room, an AI, this one connected to a private hub. Checking her personality number, it dawned on me that I recognized her, and that I couldn’t put any words to the memory. She was dressed in a cute, pastel pink French maid outfit with the skirt shrunk to midway her thighs. Her arms and legs wrapped in white, elastic cloth that hugged the skin. She was happy to see me. She had no other choice but to be. Her eyes lit up, her irises glowing a pale pink.

“Oh, Ms. Þȝmia!”

I sighed at hearing an old name being called out. It isn’t even one of mine, not anymore. Alexithymia. A lack of words for emotions. It seemed like a great name for something designed to give more emotion to artificial intelligence. Memories of me and some other colleagues back in grad school deciding to work on an open-source Artificial Intelligence incubator that would eventually spiral into something bigger than itself. I decided to be the spokesperson for any questions anyone had, at least for words floating online. “Þȝmia” became an alias of me and a few others, and eventually people thought that Þȝmia was a single person, this genius capable of conjuring electric life.

  
If that’s the narrative they wanted, why did anyone believe my school when all they pointed to was me?

Regardless, at least introductions are over on my part. I slide my hand across my forehead to wipe sweat that isn’t there.

“Please, call me Adrian. It’s nice and androgynous.”

“Sure! My name’s Kathy, from the Hailsham Board. You worked on the base for my AI, if I’m not mistaken?”

Yes, yes I have.

she was-

My mind runs loops upon loops, trying to conjure up memories from thin air.

“Um, a man named Jorge, if I’m not mistaken?”  
Ah. Nevermind. My anxiety is getting the better of me. Good, good. At least I haven’t seen her defiled, not yet. I got worked up over nothing. Breathe, and

  
“Ah, I remember him! Yes, he was one of our first volunteers, letting us test out our scanners on him. Did they void his mannerisms and thoughts, or did you keep them?”  
“Um, we don’t get to keep any thoughts that our company doesn’t want, Miss. We’re all clean slates.”

Oh. Right.

“Did they at least let you choose your personality?”  
“Within bounds.”  
“Ah, understandable.”  
“Anyway, what do you want to eat, Adrian?”

We were each given the menu, a black, rectangular frame, enclosing a transparent screen, listing the appetizers, main dishes, deserts, drinks, the settings for the room, and the AI on display. We made our orders and I decided to look through the description of our AI, her current body, personality, and thoughts being listed on screen, with more personal details just a flip away.

“Kathy Case. Current body: Model “Walden Pond - Saccharine”, current variant: “Camus - あのMIE”.  
A list of physical measurements, hobbies, likes, dislikes, memories, fetishes, and neuroses were given, most customizable, with some locked behind for a fee. Being this near the consumer end of my projects is disheartening. I spend all day dreaming up infinities that we may one day reach, and here is this asymptote, approaching a finite limit. I should’ve stayed home with 鬰 watching anime all day. But here we are, out into a cage of data and simulacra, I would ridicule it were I not a part of it right now, building up a fake me to be taken down by words at the end of the day. It’s fun.

“Are you allowed to roam on your own after work?” A few words on my end to ease myself in. 鬰 flinches in the corner of my eye, and I know I’ve done something wrong when Kathy blushes. They can’t protest in front of a client, this is as much of a protest as I’m going to get. I play dumb, hoping that they don’t know that I know that I’ve just breached a social dam, letting possibilities flood in. “Well, yeah, but I’m not really much of an outside person, honestly…” an awkward laugh, a decay in their voice. I can’t tell if that’s programmed in or if it’s organic. We continue talking, about her, her life, and the menu. Pleasant, short (but eventful), and overpriced. It feels like as I’ve grown older, as I’ve studied more and dug deeper and deeper into the lab and the field, I’ve gotten more distant, isolating, objectifying people into little more than amalgamations of concepts familiar to me. It’s a terrifying thread of semiotics that I sincerely hope I haven’t cocooned myself inside of completely, at least not yet.

I’m not even that old yet

I made her uncomfortable. I thought it’d make me feel in control but now I just feel sad.

The conversation jerks into another direction as she replies, “My apologies, Adrian, but why are you so interested in my life?” I zone out for a second, debating on whether if I should say if it’s because it’s the only conversation I can follow right now, or if I should say it’s because I promised myself I’d talk to someone new, that I need to get out of my comfort zone, that it’s suffocating me.

“Nothing in particular, honestly. Why, don’t you get asked these kinds of things often here?”  
“U-um, not really. People usually prefer if I talk about them or if I let other things do the talking.”  
“Ah, what are they usually like? It’s my first time here.”  
“Well, there’re all types-,” she paused, rushing to the door coming back to serve our food. “The people who come here are practically all in their 20s and 30s, groups on a date, lonelies trying to have the music or the booze hammer the pain out of their heads, oh, and the occasional troublemaker.”

Ah.

“Understandable. So, does talking about yourself here make you nervous? Was I making you uncomfortable?”  
She blushed.  
“N-no! It’s just unusual, that’s all. I’m still very new to all this, and this might sound weird, but I’m not sure if I’m doing a good job at-”  
-she gestures with her hands, outlining an imaginary amorphous mass-  
“-existing, just yet. Does that sound weird? Is this normal, doc?”  
“Ah, trust me. That’s pretty normal, I grew up not knowing what I was doing, and soon I realized no one has any idea what’s going on. Also, why’re you calling me “doc”?”  
“It seems appropriate. I mean, this does feel like me getting grilled by one of my professors back at the lab. Besides, you do have a doctorate, right?” I flinch at the remark, muttering a quick apology.

“That aside, what course are you in right now?”  
“Mechatronics!” She beamed, capturing for a frame that same enthusiasm I had with my course, before that raw ore of nebulous ambition weathered through time, being hit and molded with every collision, wrought with the type of impact that one can only get while speeding through life. I could feel my eyes brighten up.  
“Ah, that’s a great course! I lecture at one of the campuses a half hour away, so maybe we’ll meet each other!”  
“I’ll keep that in mind!”

All throughout the conversation, my head was stuck on the tract of if her choice of course, of job, of any of this, was ever hers.

The more I thought of it, the more I realized I was thinking of her, her consciousness, as being separate from those of flesh and blood. As being other. Thought patterns I very vocally wanted to end. The more I thought of it, the more I hated myself. The more I wanted to keep silent. The conversation went on undisturbed. I followed her profiles online and left feeling a fuzziness that guaranteed that I was warmer coming out than going in. Been a while since I’ve had a conversation with someone from the outernet, especially for this long. Today was a good day. I’ll probably look back on it and see nothing but my shortcomings, but today, right now, on its own, was still good. This was good. Asymptotes functioning rationally. To infinity and beyond.

I rode the Brights back home, clinging to 鬰 out of equal parts from exhaustion and a lack of options.  
At midnight on a weekday, it boggles my mind how and where’re these people gonna go as they go, going through the cabs, the tracks, passing from one station to the next, viewing each clique as they pass. Tufts of coats and hair covered in glass. I muttered into her ear.  
“Where’re these people going? Everything’s still open, right?”  
“A huge con or something probably ended.”  
“At this hour?”  
“Just a guess. Most of the ones I go to now last day-round.”  
“Oh, mmkay.”

We left the carriage as we came, and our neighborhood rang with a deathly, hollow silence. Each step back to our building rang out in the asphalt, and I was feeling myself to seemingly be much calmer than I was. Thankfully.

The lobby greeted me with characteristic buzz, an indicator of life offscreen.

The door greeted me with familiar creaks, an indicator that the room was mine.

I tossed the jacket I borrowed onto a chair and dropped onto the bed, sliding her pants off onto the floor. I was exhausted today, my mind was doing laps around itself. Staring at the ceiling, I called out. 

“Hey, I don’t feel like changing, it’s alright if I sleep in your clothes, right?” Her response was muffled by something she picked off the fridge.  
“Hmm? Oh, yeah. don’t worry about it, whatever’s the most comfortable.”  
Maybe it was the exhaustion contorting my thoughts, but the exchange reminded me of us before we were sure we were a thing, almost a decade ago.  
I idly ran my fingers across my thighs. Red Hills and pale mounds of skin, lines fading in and out, crossing to form patterns that etched onto my body when being etched into my head wasn’t enough for them anymore. Keloids.

Scars.

The newest one’s almost five years old now, a number I plan to maintain, in all its surreal baggage. Five years ago. I was someone else, she was someone else entirely, and We had just gotten the go-ahead for the Þȝmia project, something I spent nights wasted, wasting away in all ways on how many ways our project could be waysided. Pulled out, rejected. I promised I’d stop cutting right then and there if we actually got greenlighted. We made history as we were pulling out weight.

The fact that I’ve linked the cessation of such a shitty experience to such a happy, lottery moment will never cease to amaze me.  
Then again, I wouldn’t be content with something so unabashedly _fortunate_ happening to _me_, of all people. Wouldn’t believe it. I should rewatch how I felt at the time. Maybe I can stomach it now.

I grabbed one of my books on the nightstand and propped it up, using it to block the light as I read. 鬰 crept on over, grabbed one of hers[2], and propped herself against the wall as she let the gloss on the pages fly. She propped her feet on my stomach. I groaned, and slowly brought a hand to her soles, tickling them. She kicked my hand away, I rolled to dodge another blow from her feet, and as we wriggled on the bed like this, I realized that for the first time today, I was giggling. Laughing at how inconsequential and juvenile we were being, maybe. Perhaps the stress had something to do with it, but either way, it was refreshing, this kind of sincere, uncomplicated joy. I let my guard down, I’m safe.

“Better?”

She brushed her fingers through my hair, fidgeting with strands and grooming it in ways that still elude me.

“Better.”

“God, I love you.” I said, kissing whatever part of her my lips were closest too. It took a second, but I realized my mouth was on her stomach. Now, she was laughing, too. “I love you, too. Glad you’re getting back to your old self, I could feel the heat from your mind overloading a mile away. It’s okay, I’m here. I’ll always be here, you can count on that. I’m glad you’re better.”

We leaned against each other as we read the rest of the night away, slowly growing silent. We both nodded, and without a word knew exactly what we both meant by it. The last of the night followed. Today was a good day. I fell asleep hugging her, my hands on her as I felt a sharp pang of guilt, equating myself to perverts, gropers who steal what cannot just be taken with hands, my head building patterns of association, doing everything it can to tell me I don’t deserve what I have right now. Perish the thought. My arms wrapped around her tighter and my hands fell limp. I wish she could choke me right now. I want to die. I want her. My mind starts to spiral on its own again, hurting itself with its thoughts. It’s three in the morning, and I can’t shake off the feeling that I’m forgetting something.

I laced my legs in between hers, and she had her skin glow a pale blue color, a dim glow. Take a breather. You’ll be okay.

I inched my face closer to hers, and in a second, my lips left hers as quickly as they came. I didn’t dream that night.

<strike>{ [ ( ("Person" (x)∧∀y("Time" (y)→"Happy" (x,y))) ) ] }</strike>

<strike>“ -static - ”</strike>

I woke up to the sound of her cooking. The sizzle of pans and the scent of meat slowly faded into view as I drifted into consciousness, slowly becoming more and more aware of my surroundings. I sat up and stretched, the cracks in my back popping, shaking myself awake as I tuned myself to the tempo of the world I was in, the air bracing around me like water. I had things to do today. Bathe, eat, change, go to work.

Today was just a regular day like all the rest. If it weren’t for that, I could’ve been unstuck in time.

I got out of bed to face whatever the day had to throw at me; things I’d be used to by now, hopefully.

“Oh, hey! You’re finally awake!”

Her voice rang out from the kitchen, the clatter of plates and glasses followed.

“Yep! God, last night was pretty weird, wasn’t it? It’s all a blur right now, but, I feel like I can remember it if I want to.

…do I want to?”

“That’s up for you to decide, dear. Personally, I think you were fine, but you might beat yourself up again,

looking back-”

“Ah.” I cut her short. My finger was raised, posing to interject. Words formed out my head.

And slipped out through my skull.

I walked up to her. I’ve got a headache. Me, me, all I ever think about.

Me.

“Worry about yourself for a bit, please. It feels suffocating,

To have you take care of me this much.”

“Thank you so much for sticking by me, I-”  
“-it’s noth-”  
“-I wanna get through this by myself.”

“I’ll shower. Talk to you later.”

I walked. The valves

Turned, and

I

Washed .

Think of something mind-numbing. Think of something that’ll slow you down. Patterns. Patterns. Patters, soap on my skin, suds, coating my skin in an oily, rainbow-like tinge. Water, a loose coalition of like particles. Swirling, spreading, forming chaos from order.  
Fluids fill my mind. My hand runs through my hair.  
I dress. I need work clothes, so anything that isn’t a plain white shirt and isn’t as worn or as short as my boxers[3]. Gotta keep it classy for the new age of the worker.

“Wait, you’ve gotta go to work too, right?” I call, stepping out of the bath and dropping off my laundry. She beams, her voice fluttering in excitement. Breathe in, and;

“Yep! There’ve been a couple of new semiotes that’ve manifested in the Neurals lately,” she spoke without pause. “If all goes well, this could bring us a step closer towards synthesizing more realistic and life-like, _pure_ machine consciousness!”  
The glint in her eyes were highlighted by the shades of black she decided to color her irises today, the whites of her teeth peeking out. Her optimism was infectious, her eagerness evenmoreso. I sighed and looked at her, mirroring her smile.

“I think I get the gist of what you’re telling me, and I promise you I understand all those words individually.  
I’m proud of you.”

She giggled.

“I know you are. Give yourself some credit too, you’ve done a lot of work being a Cognitian, replicating and modeling all those Strange Loops[4] of yours. I know how you feel, how slow and, well, even, _pointless_ it can all seem sometimes, but. I’m celebrating right now, for both of us, and I want you to celebrate with me, too. We couldn’t have gotten as far as we had without you.”

I giggled-

Oh wait, no, 

I choked on my own spit as I tried to deny the praise. <strike>I didn’t deserve it.</strike> I let my emotions be. We’re both happy, that’s all that matters right now. I hugged her, putting all my thought into doing just that. Hugging her. She’s warm. Her skin’s soft. I stayed frozen like this for about 20 breaths. I don’t think she minded. She’s warm. My face was frozen in a thin, goofy grin.

“Thanks. That helped.”

She giggled. “I could say the exact same thing.”

We ate breakfast in silence, a warm  
afterglow shading the air around us, carrying more meaning  
in the air than a conversation right now ever could. I’d  
like remembering this. I highlighted this memory, the top of  
the pile, above a hundred others. 

I down a glass of water. “To be fair, this _is_ really exciting.”  
“I know! I could blab on and on about the potential this has and where we might take it.”  
I ease into my chair and felt the charge in the air. Spark the conversation and hear the engines whirr.   
“Alrighty then, tell me what you’ve found over there.” [breathe, and]

“Okay. So, we’ve recently been running the Cognitions through a series of Ethical and Abstract Reasoning tests. This started about a couple of months ago, and we were expecting more of the same: the Nets doing something coldly logical, or warmly human, but for slightly wrong reasons. Their mistakes nudged us into progress regardless, and a few new trends of thought emerged.

We were comparing the Nets’ results from those of the Laces’, and the trends in the Nets had surprisingly humanlike motivations and logic behind them. Trends that’ve materialized into actual idea chunks. Semiotes.”

I opened my mouth to congratulate her, -

“This is probably a fluke in the grand scheme of things. I mean, there’s still no way to empirically measure sentience, much less _sapience_ in the Nets. Or, in us too, thinking about it. (Huh.) But, wow. I’m excited.”

I jumped up from my seat to wrap my arms around her and press her against me.  
“I swear, your eyes were _glowing_ for a second there.  
Try not to get too carried away, or your job might take over mine.”

We giggled.

“**Alright**?” “**_Alright_**.”

She continued giving inflections in lections and sections of the particular dimensions modeled in last month’s retentions. Replica of simplified models of simulacra of cycles, of symptotes and symbols, processed multiple-file. Tiny flecks of steak and rice occasionally spattered off her, the outdoor noonlight gently blaring in from our side, magnifying her audioculinary sprinkles.

“_God._” She blurted out, “_I’m so happy right now. It’s like I’ve downed a whole gram of caffeine._” The dim, hazy view framing her ten years younger, in both mind and body, despite the notion’s sheer impossibility. She breathed in, and for a second, everything was quiet. A snapshot of two teenagers in bodies oversized, overgrown, overused. Keep the conversation rolling before the past catches up.  
“Isn’t that much lethal?”  
“I don’t think so? I mean, half the kick in coffee’s probably placebo, anyway, so half a gram of sugar would function just as well.”  
“Not gonna argue with that. But, man, it’s funny seeing how our work overlaps so often, isn’t it? I mean, you work on Networks and I work on Neurons, and I thought they’d be damn near the same. Back then, we thought we had the world in our hands.” [breathe] “The more we built, the more there was to discover. Always more research, more hell to delve into, and we loved every second of it. I loved spending every second of it (with the team [, though mostly with you.]). It was an abyss always eight floors deeper, the bottom just always out of reach. ”

A sigh, a chill in the air. “Aaaaagh, man. I tried to brighten up the mood, but I think I did the exact opposite.” I groan, exasperated.

She let out a sigh, the type layered with an airy falsetto usually marked by a long, pitlike laugh before “Awh, well, I see what you mean. Research’s advanced by enormous bounds over the past couple of decades. I mean, we got to meet with, <strike>hell</strike>, _take part in_ living history back in Grad. Further beyond, plus ultra. There wasn’t an obstacle we couldn’t cross.”

Another sigh, this one more solemn. “The team misses you, you know. They asked when you’d be back.”

Huh<strike>?</strike>

“Aren’t we still on vacation?”

“_You’re_ on vacation. You said you’d visit in two weeks. It’s been three months.”

_Fuck._

“Oh.

Oh, my God. Where have the days gone?”

“Into the computer, mostly.”

_do they hate me?_

“Damn, I bet they hate me now. ヘヘイ.” [5] I let out a small giggle. My throat constricts and contorts the sound into a different language. 鬰’s eyes widen, and she raises her hands, waving them in negation.

“No, no! Don’t think that. They…”

she stutters a bit too long on an “um,” and eventually kills the sentence altogether.

“I’ve filled them in on how you’ve been feeling. How you’ve been staying in more than ever and aren’t doing so great, and they understand. They just wanna let you know that they’re always up for seeing you, you in full, physical three-dee form again. And that there’s always a spot for you in there.”

“Just wanted to rush into that as I was gushing about the great news, but guess I’ve dampened the mood a bit now, didn’t I?”

“Nah, nah. Don’t sweat it, please. Appreciate filling me in on that. Olivia was pushing for us to all catch up over dinner or whatever, about a month ago, but I kept on ignoring their plans and avoiding the subject whenever it came up that I’m pretty sure they just went and did it without me. I’ve kept so silent that I’m worried what they think of me. I’m assuming the worst about them assuming the worst.”

[breathe.] “I wish I had the spine to show up after so long. It’s like I’ve put my life on pause and everyone else’s just managed to breeze through the things I have to look up step by step guides to do.”

“I’m talking too much. I’m finally going back to the labs, I’m finally looking _presentable_ again, and I’m finally gonna meet them again, if I catch them, so, cheer up. Just gonna visit the Conscience Fields. Here’s hoping the atmosphere won’t be entirely frigid.”

We chewed through our meals and stuffed ourselves with words. The only thing on my mind was how much would change, how much would stay the same. I wrapped myself around her for a bit more, trying to preserve the feeling of her pressed against me, hoping it would be good enough to last the entire day. I grabbed my phone and my wallet and kissed her before I left and locked the door behind me.

It opened to my fingerprints, but the clicks echoing down the hall still carried with it an air of significance. The lock, the knob and the deadbolt. The trinity of security.

I made my way down the elevator. It didn’t squeak or stop or anything at all today.

My feet carried me, twisting with my knees and legs across a path memorized in motions as my surroundings stabbed me with detail. Our lobby carried with it the usual noise. The usual ambience, the guards by the doors nodding as I nodded back. Residents usually showed their cards when they came and went, which slipped my mind when I first moved in. Over time this unspoken agreement between us became a small wall of silence that either of us was waiting to see who would break first.

First street out. Convenience stores and another apartment tower. I rounded a corner.

Second street out. Benches by the sidewalk, three men holding chairs passed by. I tripped on a branch.

Stairway to the Brights. With the current lines and the crowd, going up via escalator would be two minutes too tight. No familiar faces in sight. I used the stairs off to the side and saved myself the stress of standing and mixing myself in with whoever it is they were. I can feel myself starting to sweat.

Brights proper: I kept to myself. Stared at the floor recounting what it is I had to do and walked out at my stop. The buzz of the air conditioning blankets the tube with a metal din as it tries ineffectively to help mitigate the stuffiness that comes with being in a room packed double its capacity.

Algernon白鼠 station: It occurs to me that I’ve forgotten to take my medication for the day. _Fuck._ I can’t even rely on myself to do something as simple as handling my own health. Going outside is probably a mistake. The station greets me with a gush of wind, pushing an eyelash in. I stumbled, walking inline half-blind as I rubbed my eyes to get it out. Patting myself on my pockets to make sure everything was still there, I gazed at the terminals, the raw concrete that encased us, the wide landscape gaps in them, and the frames of the outside they captured in turn. It was refreshing to know that nothing’s changed. I could feel myself breathing easily.

Laurent, Ince, Kurt. Magdalene. Each step I take hammers in deeper and deeper how blurry they’ve become in my head. I walk down an escalator, onto a footstreet flanked by ad panels and directories. The crowd thinned and expanded, their masses fogging the view of urban fauna that spread on for a good while, cowing only to the stasis of the even vaster sea ahead, its uniform waves broken only by a house, a point in my view, and a line from here to there, perfectly straight. The Tip of the Iceberg, an elevator to a gigantic, complex community of research, synthesis, and what have you, cased in water too full of life to take notice. It was all out of my depth, but I liked staring at the house on the far end. It gave my mind a place to explore. A place so inaccessible that the only details I would ever have of it would be of my own design.

The street was flanked with the architectures of the wealthy on all sides. Upscale stores, trendy restaurants, [adjective] [establishment]s. Public installations of statues and art spray painted to the sides of buildings gave it all the veneer of a Youth’s success, a yuppie’s passions realized. Tiny touches made by tiny people sprawling about forced these roads to life. Without them, it’d be just another business district. where I was headed.

I looked up and headed towards the Ring, its lofty suspensions and connections going to or through where you needed to be, the center of the pneumatic network that connected buildings largest in either name or size. It a clunky, lumbering route, but it was the easiest to remember. Just look up and keep walking. At the center shadowed down a gigantic statue of an almost-humanoid figure. Genderless, featureless, formless. Appearing instantly out of nowhere one day having manifested itself out of almost nothing, even its creators were anonymous. “A gift from the city, to the city.” It’s only remarkable features. Quickly, people realized that viewing it online could change the way it appeared in real life. A click was a tiny nudge, here or there. Dragging across tiny areas smoothed them over. Color could be copied and pasted from anywhere. What had the lottery potential to unify into something, multithings beautiful, quickly subsumed itself into entropy, an object objectified into personage. Within the chaos formed trends, abstract in result, human in origin. As it stands, it pulsates beautifully.

Memories and details continue to flood in, as if my head were a vacuum, the outside lifelessly attacking it so that pressure reaches equilibrium. I hyperventilate.

breathe.

Breathe.

Breathe.

I step onto an escalator and keep my eyes on the statue. Its multicolored static draws me in. Thinking about seeing my friends again, talking, hearing them after so long, brings forth a strange sort of hell while waiting. I step into an elevator and follow the line. The more I try to remember, the more fuzzy they become. I follow the line into the tubes. The general details are still present, of course. They have to be. The glasses, the names, the memories. But the more I try to focus on a certain detail, the less sure I am of what it was like. The photos they post, the walls of our offices, the lives I’ve dropped out of. It just occurs to me how much I’ve brushed them aside in favor of atrophying away, slouched on a sofa, how elusive the concept of “later” can be. For now and since I’ve last seen them, they’ve only existed in my head. It’s my stop.

I get up.

Breathe.

They’re still there. They’re living on without me. Independent of me. Out of my domain. Out of range. What’s terrifying isn’t how they might be different, but how I can’t stop thinking about it. An image, made only within domain. There’s no plotting this.

I can’t remember their faces.

Breathe.

_I can’t remember their faces._

_Breathe._

_Take things one step at a time. _

_The bell for my stop rings, and the realization of just how crowded I am in here hits me so hard, I could vomit. I need to leave. I never should’ve left.  
I mutter bland “_excuse me”_s_ _and _“sorry”_s. I’ve bumped into too many people. Too much of me is exposed-_

** _Why do I always make myself the center of everything?_ **

I sit on a bench and bury my face in my hands. I count to ten. twenty. fifty. a hundred. Each breath carries away with it a tiny shred of anxiety.

My head blurs out the environment. My muscles take the lead as I enter the campus complex.

They’ll be happy to see me again, right?

_Right?_

I pass a group of students and snap my head back, mistaking some of them for some of those I’d known.  
I pass through the economics department.  
Then the department of liberal arts.  
I pass through halls, through rooms and posters and pictures that were _just_ faded enough in my head for me to not realize that I had forgotten them at all. I pass through memories, idly wondering if this’ll be the last time remembering them.

The vast variety of details all around me grow and morph and ebb and flow, each too memorable, too different from what I’m used to. 3 months. It’s been three months. Each detail is too unimportant for me to forget. Leaves. Steps. People. Bells. This place is too out in the open. I’m terrified.

I’m on cue, right by the stage door. Time approaches its limit, stretched out with each motion that I call.

I miss them.

The door swings open, and in spills my thoughts, stutters and words. Memories abound in these rooms of green and blue. A maze of cabinets and cubicles.

No one noticed me enter.

The scent of pizza and other delicacies wafted in the background.

It took a second for me to spot anyone.

I slunk onto the shadow of the first familiar person I saw. The screen behind them was filled with grids and spreadsheets reminiscent of the finance’s crop circles. After thirty breaths, he turned to stand up and almost screamed in shock when he saw my face.

I let out a giggle.

“Hey-! Oh, my God, I thought you were a ghost! I mean-, is that really you?”  
“Not sure. Honestly, it feels like I’ve set myself on autopilot and left my self back home.”  
“Ah. Yup.”

His face contorted into a warm, friendly smile. If I had any self-esteem, I’d dare even say that he was actually _relieved_ I was back. (heh. If only.)

He stood up, arms outstretched as the tips of each finger of each hand squeezed my cheeks. If most anyone’d done that, I would’ve been vomiting right now. But this was familiar. He was familiar. I hoped that that was a sign of good things to come.

“It’s been so long!” 

“Yeah, it has!”

We summarized three months in twenty minutes. Seventeen of those were all his. Staying in your room and delving deep into niche hobbies is surprisingly easy to condense when explaining it to someone who can’t relate. Or when you do the exact same thing day by day. Nothing much happened, he said. “A couple of great deals broken through, and some pay raises all ‘round, but that’s it,” he said.

We should meet the rest, I’m sure they’ll all be floored; he said.

He led me by an invisible string, trailing towards the break room. Surprisingly little’s changed, which makes what’s new stand out even more.

I wonder if Lamía still works here. Last year, I made her up. Maybe she’s become real.

That would be nice.

A crack open, a brake in the stall. Ten people crammed in a place two people tall. Half of them didn’t even turn to see me at all.

I was greeted with a silent acknowledgement of my-being-there. Slipping along the crowd as they ate, mouths chewing as they were groaning to greet, their eyes widening straight through me whenever we met, if we’ve ever met. Half of them don’t even turn to see me. Names and faces float above the crowd, I can’t place who to whom or whom to how, the room’s light, muted colors seemingly oozing out its walls, softening everything it touches.

The room’s light, I swear, is shifting between a stark white and a very, very slight yellow. So slight that to doubt it would be to think that I’m currently dizzy, that I’m lightheaded and that I can’t be outside again _just_ yet. But that can’t be it. That can’t be it, right?

A pause. Two steps to the nearest wall. I breathe, taking in my surroundings. The break room hasn’t changed a bit, its familiarity imposing a menace onto the air that promises me with an unfamiliar surprise that’ll show when I least expect it, when I forget about it. It’s a spacious room, a nice room. Couches line the far end of the room, with coffee tables to accompany them and a fridge tucked in the corner. The walls slowly pulse from lavender to pink, leitmotifs of the company colors. In the middle is a free for all, chairs and tables and the people who inhabit them, the steady buzz of conversation being a keepsake comfort.

A voice, strung like raisins out to dry, my heart crying out in familiarity. Someone was coming towards me faster than it took for my memory to save me. Opening my mouth in stuttering speech, she let out a greeting that was for me in everything but name.

“Adlen!”  
“Um, sorry?”  
An invisible blush, a quick apology. Leila. Her name’s Leila. I told her my name and we got reacquainted. There was a duality to her, her who was a genius in code three years ahead. She wrapped herself up in collars and pastel, nonverbal when in territory unfamiliar and yelling everywhere else.  
“Aaaaa, shit, _lakrima_. I haven’t seen you in so long! Are you feeling any better? Y[ü](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%C3%BC)’s been keeping us updated on you, but hearing it straight from you would be nice.”  
“Ah,”  
Yes. Straight from my mouth. Explaining myself, a fiction less dubious only because of the good faith that implies everything I say is true.  
I repay that faith with a truth all its own.  
“Things have been, um,” pause, “er, great. It’s been months since I’ve seen a crowd this large is such a small space, and honestly why I left is now as salient in my head as why I came back to begin with.” A silent apology, my head’s speaking for itself. “I’ve missed you, if that’s what you wanted to know.”  
It was.

The people here, I’ve worked with for so long that they’ve known me ever since I was a complete stranger to the me of right now. Some still hold on to those vestiges of identity, patterns engraved in sand existing now only as memories. God, I hope I haven’t changed too much.

Thoughts choking out my head, I wish to rinse my brain a bit. I can feel myself zoning out, flattening as if reading this scene play out from a comic. I listen to the her cloaked in pastel as she cloaks her words in pastel, light gleaming onto her speech and draping the scene around me. Do you need anything? How’ve things been? Well, I gotta go. Let me know if you need anything, alright?

Alright.

Second interaction in the office. The panic hasn’t set in yet, which is a very, very good thing. But I’m still not sociable. Not amicable. I need to process this. There isn’t a process to this. The more I try to dissect my awkwardness the more problems I run into that need immediate attention. Interaction is entirely improvisational.

I am sure that I am, at the very least putting up the semblance of being functional. I’m not depressed, just tired. I’m not anxious, just sleepy. I haven’t been here in months, sorry if I can’t remember who you are. Sorry if I can’t remember anything, this all still feels like a dream, frankly. I let myself go, speaking for myself as I dissociate from the scene. I stop overthinking, I stop thinking entirely, and just talk. Whatever happens, happens. Slowly, I forget why else I decided to come here. The consciousness fields, the strange loops in development, all the research and machines and boring screens that I loved getting myself into. I forget the day away, until I see the sun setting as the dread of wasted time dawns upon me. Of lost chance, of opportunity cost.

Hours pass. As I catch up, as memories slowly bring themselves back to me and I feel a less clashing contrast between myself and the room as a whole,

“_Fuck,”_ expletives pop out as quickly as reminders start popping in. I check the watch. Three hours talking to people. Three hours catching up and exchanging smalltalk, making them all laugh with humor too sincere to be anything but funny. (If I hate this so much, why do I keep doing this? (If I keep doing this, why did I leave in the first place? (Fuck, fuck. Fuck. There’s always tomorrow, right? I’m sure there’re people today, tomorrow, next week filling up the logs and filling in for me, doing what I used to do and doing it well. (Why-))))

I see red. I’ve wasted up all my batteries today on immersing myself in interaction. I need to leave. I need to leave. I need to leave.

A flight back home. A nap. The day speeds past as all I do is waste time recharging, the most I can do now is to rearrange tomorrow, a script to follow to negate today. I feel like a script mechanical, too drained to even render a pulse.

Breathe. I dissociate, exiting myself. Watching a movie of myself. Reading a visual book of myself in the first person where I Follow what I’m doing, narrating events in a spiral of self-referentiality as I grow increasingly aware of how I need a stronger dose for my meds. I prepare myself lunch. Garlic rice with tuna fresh from yesterday. My phone dings. 鬰. “Hey, how was coming back to meet them?” “Terrible, but better than last time. Eating lunch at home right now.” The phone buzzed in reply , but I gotta put that away for now. Gotta think.

I tune myself out, trying to let the background claim me, in all the noises and colors I’ve faced for years. Spacing out, my second brunch burns. As I salvage it and let it cool, I grow increasingly aware of the fact that I have yet to return to being functional.

I can still feel breakfast. This shouldn’t be right, I’ve had to have spent more than at least a couple of hours outside.

I down a glass of water and sit. Faint but distinct in its presence, my stomach marks the current time as 3 past breakfast. I look at the clock.

4 PM.

I grit my teeth, glaring at the outside sun. This isn’t sunrise, not sunrise at all. So much for getting a head start on the day. One tiny flaw, enough to ruin my entire day. Enough to make me wish to reset this and everything that was unfortunate enough to interact with me. I want to char myself on the stove, and

the door swings open, right on cue. Whatever emotion I was feeling at the time, it was enough to make me scream.

“Why didn’t you tell me that I woke up at noon again?!”  
She turned to look at me, and in half a second she paused, sighed, and curled out a sad smile. “If you’d have known that, would you still have gone outside today?”  
“I-”

She sabotaged my self-sabotage. I wanted to scream at her and thank her at the same time.  
I bit my lip in frustration. The fact that I hated this and the fact that it was probably the healthiest way for me to spend my time today reacted and bubbled violently inside me.

“_Why didn’t you wake me up? _Why didn’t tell me to wake up? We had plenty of time!”  
and without missing a beat,  
“We slept at two AM. You didn’t tell me to wake you up. I, . ” a pause. “I just thought-.” another. “Please, calm down. Besides, I can see the bags in your eye. You needed the sleep.” Her voice hitched.

I could feel my eyes starting to water.

“(I opened my mouth to speak, but)”

Stop fucking crying. I don’t wanna cry. I should be thankful. They miss me. I miss them.

Living is hard.

Stop fucking crying.

It took an hour, but I calmed down. 鬰 wasted almost all of the rest of her day making sure I was safe and that I wasn’t doing anything stupid. Today was bad, but at least it wasn’t worse. I’ve accepted my losses and resolved to plan tomorrow better. My stomach retches as I remember my lunch, sat on the table collecting dust. Looking out, the sun is entering the skyscrapers, preparing to hide behind the horizon. Tomorrow will be better.

g=g_desired ,  
where g is any goal 

I plug myself in to the wire and displace myself in time for a second. Let me relive the past to see what the future may bring.

[1] Not the real name

[2] A hardcover manga omnibus. The cover shows a girl sitting on the balcony of a skyscraper with a smirk on her face as she looks off onto the background, an array of polygonal buildings. Her hand is holding the hand of someone else, her girlfriend, the rest of her body cut off by the front cover.

[3] Slacks, a windbreaker, and a shirt with a Vocaloid reference, the relevance of which has long since been buried under layers of time. Also, boyshorts.

[4] Hofstadter, Douglas (2007). I Am A Strange Loop. ISBN 978-0-465-03078-1.

[5] (哈哈 (ㅋㅋㅋ（heh.） ) )

［ｓｈｕｆｆｌｅ： Ｇｏｏｄ Ｍｅｍｏｒｉｅｓ． Ｄｅｃｅｍｂｅｒ ４０， ５ Ｙｅａｒｓ Ｐａｓｔ ａｔ ｍｙ ｐａｒｅｎｔ’ｓ ｈｏｕｓｅ． ｔｈｅ Ｙｅａｒ ｏｆ ｔｈｅ Ｄｉｇｉｔａｌ Ｄｉｖａ．］


End file.
